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Timely Topics 



44 



THE HYPHEN IN 
AMERICAN HISTORY" 

An address by 
Mr. GEORGE S E I B E L. 



Reproduced from the 



ieto'l^te ^M|-JAti0. 



Monday, September 4, 1916. 



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— 1 — 



Timely Topics 






"THE HYPHEN IN AMERICAN 
HISTORY" 



I wish to call attention to the 
following address, delivered by Mr. 
George Seibol, Editor of the Pitts- 
burgh "Volksblatt & Freiheits- 
^reund", at Johnstown, Pa., on 
German Day, August 31, 1916. 

During the past two years a new 
disease has made its appearance 
in the United States, a malignant 
malady, which no one has ever 
suspected before. It originated in 
something that seems to be harm- 
less enough — a mere mark of 
punctuation. Of course, those who 
are familiar with the history of 
medicine have heard of the 
dangerous comma bacillus, dis- 
covered by Doctor Koch. He had 
some idea of the perils which 
lurked in the printer's case, yet 
even he couldn't have realized 
what a dire menace was hid in the 
seemingly innocuous hyphen. It 
remained for a famous Doctor 
from Princeton to discover this, 
and his horrifying discovery was 
verified by the researches of an- 
other wise man — the peerless navi- 
gator of the River of Doubt, the 
eminent founder of the Ananias 
Club, the mighty hunter of the 
Whiskered Bird, the discoverer of 
the Ten Commandments. It is not 
necessary to mention his name. 
L(>t us try to forget him along with 
Harry Thaw! 



The hyphen, however, is danger- 
ous only in certain combinations. 
You may be an Anglo-Saxon, or a 
British-American, or Scotch-Irish, 
or a score of other things with 
hyphens, and the hyphen will be 
a mark of distinction and a badge 
of honor. But if you are a German- 
American — that is, during the past 
two years — the hyphen is as dread- 
ful as the brand of Cain. Formerly, 
when a careless workman smoked 
a pipe in a powder factory and 
was blown up, people said it 
served him right. Nowadays, when 
hundreds of careless and unskilled 
\\orkmen all over the country, 
raked up from everywhere to 
manufacture munitions, blow up 
themselves and the factories where 
they work eighteen hours a day, 
the cry is at once raised "Hunt the 
Hyphen!" 

If somebody with a German 
name, having heard that an 
American nurse in Germany died 
of blood-poisoning because she 
had no antiseptic rubber gloves, 
attempts to smuggle some sheet 
rubber into Germany, he is at once 
hailed before a tribunal for the 
violation of American neutrality. 
He or she is bitterly attacked in 
scurrilous articles on the front 
pages of papers which circulate 
especially in the circles that year 
after year swindle the United 



— 2 — 



Gift 
Carnegie Inetitutioii 

— Of WMiumn p i^ — 



States Government by smuggling 
silks and furs from Europe, though 
they could well afforfl to pay the 
duties. But it makes a great deal 
of difference \\'hether a British- 
American hyphenate smuggles 
furs and silks into America or 
whether a German-American hy- 
phenate tries to smuggle rubber 
into Germany. The one is only 
cheating the American people, but 
the other is disobeying the British 
Foreign Office. 

It would take a day to tell you 
all the horrors aiid jerimes com- 
mitted by these wicked Hyphens. 

Why, do you know, some have 
even had the audacity to say that 
they would not vote for the re- 
election of President Wilson! They 
don't cai'e, it seems, how bad the 
"London Times" might feel if King 
George's American viceroy shovihl 
be deposed. These wicked Hyphens 
are utterly devoid of human 
sympathy. Some of them even had 
the temerity to criticise this same 
President Wilson when he refused 
to attend the unveiling of a monu- 
ment to Genei-al Nathaniel Greene. 
Who was General Greene? Second 
in command to George Washing- 
ton. Who was George Washing- 
ton? He was a hyphenate of 177G. 

Do you know that if you printed 
extracts to-day from the writings 
of Washington, Jefferson, Frank- 
lin, Paine, and their associates, 
and attempted to smuggle them 
into Canada oi' Ireland or India, 
you would probably be arrested? 
Why, there is even a little 
pamphlet written by William 
.Jennings Bi-yan, to bring which 
into India would subject a man to 
being cast into jail. 

Sometimes I wish that old 
Johann Peter Zenger coidd come 
back to us. Zengei', a German 
hyphenate of the year 1733, was 
the first ai)ostle and martyr of the 



American free press. He founded 
the first newspaper in America 
tlsal tried to toll the truth. The 
truth, then as now, was unpalat- 
al)le to the English authorities, so 
Zenger's paper was ordered to be 
burned by the hangman, and 
Zenger was thrown into jail. A 
trifling inconvenience like that did 
not scare a man like Zenger. He 
kept on editing his paper from his 
cell, giving insti-uctions to the 
printers through a crack of the 
door. After years of persecution he 
established in America the princi- 
ple of the free press, free until it 
was again fettered i)y chains of 
British gold. 

Remember that it was a Ger- 
man-American hyphenate who 
first secured for America the 
liberty of the press. The hyphen- 
ates have been first in a great 
many things, their connections 
with which in our days has almost 
been forgotten. Above all, they 
have always been first in every 
fight for liberty, in every battre 
against oiipression, in every war 
for human rights. 

Do you know that the first pro- 
test against negro slavery voiced 
on this continent came from Ger- 
mantown in the year 1688, and the 
arguments were such that it was 
impossible to refute them? It took 
nearly 150 years for the Puritans 
of New England to catch up with 
the humane idealism of Franz 
Daniel Pastorius and his comrades, 
whom Whittier has called 

"The German-born pilgrims who 

first dared to brave 
The scorn of the proud in the 
cause of the slave." 
Do you know that the first rebel 
against British tyranny on this 
continent was a hyphenate, .Jacob 
Leislei'? Just as, two centuries 
later, the first men on this conti- 



3 — 



nent to preach the new economic 
gospel of Socialism were hyphen- 
ated Germans. 

Do you know that the first Bihle 
printed in America was printed hy 
the hyi)h(Miated Christoph Saur in 
1743, forty years before any o,ther 
Bil)le was printed in America? 

Do you know that fully two 
hundred years earlier a German 
hyphenate, Johann Cromberger, 
had established the first printing 
office in the new world, in the city 
of Mexico? 

Do you l;now that the first book 
on educatiori written in America 
was written by Christoph Dock in 
1754, and that the first kinder- 
garten was brought over in 182G 
by Fred eric h Rapp? 

Do you know that the first 
American Encyclopedia was com- 
piled by Francis Lieber in 1828? 

Tlie things of the mind and the 
spirit were always their first con- 
cern, but the German Pilgrims 
have been no less conspicuous as 
pioneers in the fields of industry 
and commerce. 

Do you know that Wilhelm Rit- 
tenhaus in 1690 erected the first 
paper mill in America? 

Do you know that Thomas Ru(»t- 
ter in 1716 founded the first iron- 
works in Pennsylvania? 

Do you know that another Ger- 
man, Kaspar Wuester, in 1738, 
founded the first glass factory in 
America? 

Do you know that a hyphenated 
Pennsylvania Dutchman, Thon^as 
Leiper, in 1806, constructed tlie 
first railroad in America? 

Do you know that a Gcrmaii 
built the first steamboat tluit 
I^lowed ovu^ western waters, and 
another German as her captain 
made the first trip to New Or- 
leans? 

Do you know that the first sus- 
pension bridge was flung, a 



hyphen of steel, across an Ameri- 
can river by the hyphenated Jo- 
hann August Roebling, as if he 
wished to impress upon the world 
the fact that the hyphen unites, it 
does not separate? 

Do you know that a hyphenated 
German-American is "the foremost 
electrical engineer of the United 
States, and therefore of the 
world"? I am quoting the words 
of the President of Harvard Uni- 
versity in conferring a degree 
upon Karl P. Steinmetz. 

How many of our giant enter- 
prises were fovmded by these des- 
pised hyphenates! I shall name 
only four. The great United States 
Steel Corporation sprang from the 
furnaces of Andreas and Anton 
Kloman, started about 1850; the 
family of the man who may be re- 
garded as the father of the modern 
Department Store, John Wana- 
niaker, was originally known as 
V/annemacher; the ancestors of 
the founder of the Standard Oil 
JMisiness were called Roggenfelder; 
nnd all over the world, in 57 
languages, you will see the praise 
of the 57 varieties associated with 
th(> hyphenated name of Heinz. 

Even so in the contiguous 
realms of beauty and of truth, in 
the radiant creations of art and 
the stupendous achievements of 
science, the Germans in America 
have done their share and need 
not be ashamed. 

Do you know that the Capitol at 
Washington, the most majestic 
structure in the new world, is the 
work of a German hyphenate? Do 
you Iviio.v that the most beautiful 
building in the new world, the 
Library of Congress, is also tiie 
work of two hyphenated Ger- 
mans? 

Do >'ou know tliat the two 
largest telescopes and the two 
most important observatories in 



— 4 — 



the United States were the gift of 
two hyphenates, Lick and Yerkes? 
A German - American, Ileinrich 
Schliemann, (hig up the hiu'ied 
grandeur of Greece and raised the 
miglity men of Homer from tlie 
world of shades. 

Do you know that Johann Eeh- 
rent, in 1775, huilt the first Am(>ri- 
can piano? Do you know that you 
can't huy an unhyphenated i)iano 
w'ortli i)laying? 

The Germans have given us the 
singing society and the sympliony 
orchestras, two great agencies to 
upHft and civilize the human 
family. But in more utilitarian 
fields of humanitarian endeavor 
we also owe to them some of our 
most admirable institutions. It 
was a German Barliarian, Henry 
Bergh, who founded the societies 
for the prevention of cruelty to 
animals and children. It was a 
German Hun, Arthur von Briesen, 
who started the first Legal Aid 
Society, the precursor of hundreds, 
in the new world and the old, that 
Iiave helped to bring justice to the 
poor man. 

But there is another fi(>l(l in 
which the Germans of America- 
have not been so prominent — the 
f^eld of politics. They have a con- 
stitutional incapacity which they 
will have to overcome, for the sake 
of democracy. Politics in a demo- 
cracy is the art of asking for some- 
thing and getting your neighbors 
to think they are making you take 
it. Tlie average German prefers to 
earn what he gets and to o \e no 
man anything, and this has kept 
him away from the grab-bag. But 
so far as he has gone into poli- 
tics, he has always been the ideal- 
ist, the statesman of pure pvu'pose 
and lofty courage. 

Do you know that the original 
Lincoln man was Gustav Koerner, 
a bold l)ad hyphenate — what our 



whipped curs would call a "pro- 
fessional German"? Do you know 
that Christian Roselius, a hyphe- 
nate of Louisiana, was one nian 
who had the patriotic courage to 
refuse to sign the Confederate con- 
stitution? 

Do you know that the first treas- 
urer of the United States was a hy- 
phenated German-American, Hil- 
legas? He served for fourteen 
years, and helped pull Uncle Sam 
out of many a hole. Look at his 
picture on the next ten-dollar bill 
you hand over to the Geiman Red 
Cross Fund. 

Do you know that the first 
speaker of the American Congress 
was a hyphenated German-Ameri- 
can, Muehlenberg? And in our 
generation the father of Civil Ser- 
vice Reform was that great cham- 
pion of liberty in two worlds, the 
dauntless fighter of 1848 and 1801, 
the sage and statesman CiU'l 
Schurz. 

If they have not held so many 
of the offices, the German-Ameri- 
cans have fought more of the 
battles of America. In every great 
conflct they have poured their 
blood, blood from the Rhine and 
the Oder, from the Elbe and the 
Danube, upon the altar of i)atriotic 
devotion. 

The war of American Indepen- 
dence was lai-gely fought by Ger- 
man .soldiers. When Washington 
called for volunteers, the first to 
arrive were German sharpshooters 
from Berks County. Squads of Ger- 
man-American riflemcMi tramped 
six hundred miles from Virginia 
and Massachusetts to help throw 
the British out of the American 
colonies. It seems that they did not 
succeed in throwing all of them 
out, and a few more squads should 
go up to Boston and finish the 
job. 

When a conspiracy against 



- o 



Washington's life was discovered, 
it became necessary to provide 
him with a liody-giiard that could 
be trusted absohitely. Where was 
sucli a body-guard to be found? 
Wiicre but among tiie Germans of 
Berks and Lancaster counties, 
Pennsylvania? Their captain was 
Major Bartholomaous von Heer, a 
Prussian. If any one had come 
to Geoi'ge Washington, the friend 
of Heer and Steuben, and told him 
it was necessary to crush the Prus- 
sians, George Washington would 
have had the Tory scoundrel 
locked in the guard-house. 

It was not only the hundred and 
fifty stalwart men of Washington's 
body-guard that showed how the 
Germans stood during the war of 
Independence. When Congress 
ordered Pennsylvania to furnish 
six companies, our hyphenated 
state furnished nine, four of them 
entirely German. A German ma- 
nufacturer furnished most of the 
cannon and rifles for Washington's 
army, and when the .soldiers were 
starving nine Germans donated 
$100,000 to buy provisions. When 
Congress was at the point of re- 
fusing more money for the pvn-- 
chase of arms, one man got up 
and said: "I am only a poor ginger- 
i)read baker, but write my name 
down for two hundred pounds." 
Mis name was Christoph Ludwig, 
and he was a hyphenate. I have 
often wondered whether he was 
related to the heroine Molly Pit- 
cher, who wns also a hyphenated 
American. Molly's maiden name 
was Marie Ludwig, lest we foi-get. 

The German bakers played a 
considerable role at that time. 
Frau Margareta Greider for sev- 
eral months provided the Ameri- 
can soldiers with bread, refusing 
to accept pavment, and in addition 
she svdjsciiued 1500 guineas for the 
American cause. 



To tell of Johann von Kalb, who 
died at Camden, would require an 
ei)ic. His death was no less heroic 
than that of Nathan Hale. "This 
is nothing," were his last words; 
"I am dying the death I huxo 
longed for. I am dying for a 
country fighting for juslice and 
liberty." Yet he was only a Bai*- 
barian, only a Him, like Baion von 
Steuben, who came from the ar- 
mies of Frederick the Great to 
drill the armies of Washington. 
Steuben found at Valley Forge an 
untrained mob, ready to disband 
in desperation. Some officers 
were in gowns made of bedspreads. 
It took $400 to buy a pair of' boots. 
Steidjen changed all this, i - From 
the time he came upon the scene, 
there was an American army. At 
Yorktown the last British army on 
American soil surrendered to this 
Prussian. So the Germans drove 
the British from America. Alas, 
they have come hack and taken 
Washington. Ah, would that 
Muehlenberg and Ilerkiinei', Kalb 
and Steuben could come back to- 
day! 

No names in American history 
shine more radiantly that those of 
M'\.jhlcnherg and Herkimer. Sec 
Muehlenbei'g in his pulpit, preach- 
ing his last sei-mon! "There is a 
time for jiraying. But there is also 
a time for fighting. That time has 
now come!" He throws off his 
clerical cassock and beneath it is 
the uniform of Waslnngton's Con- 
tinentals. Several humlred mem 
hers of his congregation enlisted in 
his regiment. 

That other hero, Herkimer, paid 
with his life for the victory of 
Oriskany, which sealed the fate of 
Burgoyne's army. Smoking his 
pipe and i-eading the 38th Psalm, 
his spirit passed into the realm of 
shadows, to walk beside Leonidas 
and Winkelried. 



— — 



Do you know that Armistead, who 
defended Fort McHenry against 
the British, was a hyphenated 
Hessian? But for him it would 
have heen sad mockeiy to ask with 
Fi-ancis Scott Key 
"Oh say, does, that Star-Spangled 

Banner still wave 
O'er the land of the free and the 

home of the brave?" 
During the Civil war, also, the 
despised and maligned hyphenates 
played a prominent part in the 
preservation of the Union. As 
compared with other nationalities, 
tlio Germans furnished fifty per 
cent more than their quota of men 
to the armies of the North. One 
German family, the Penny packers, 
furnished 88 men, from common 
soldiers to a major-general. The 
first volunteers to enlist were the 
German Turners of Washington. 
Three days after Lincoln's call, 
twelve hundred Germans in Cin- 
cinnati were ready to march. That 
was real preparedness! To-day 
preparedness consists in being 
ready to sell ammvmition to the 
government at a flat profit. 

No less than forty-eight Ger- 
mans rose to the rank of General 
in the Union armies. Their nam - 
are not as familiar as some others, 
because they did not think that 
their service entitled them to be 
kept on the public payroll the re- 
rhainder of their lives. But tlicre 
are no more distinguished names 
than those on this roster: 
Gen. Carl Schurz 
Gen. Franz Sigel 
Gen. Adolph von Steinwehr 
Gen. Alex, von Schimmelpfennig 
Gen. Louis Blenker 
Gen. Peter Osterhaus 
Gen. George von Schack 
Gen. Konrad Krez 
Gen. Alban Schoepf 
Gen. Julius Stahel 
Gen. Samuel Peter Heinzelmann 



Gen. J. H. Heinzelmann 
Gen. Louis Wagner 
Gen. August Kautz 
Gen. Hugo Wangelin 
Gen. G. Pennypacker 
Gen. Friedrieh Ilecker 
Gen. Max Weber 
Gen. August Willich 
Gen. Friedrieh Salomon 
Gen. Karl Salomon 
Gen. Edward S. Salomon 
Gen. Isaak Wister 
Gen. Heinrich von Bohlen 
Gen. Adolph Hassendeubel 
Gen. Louis Zahm 
Gen. Gottfried Weitzel 
Gen. Theodor Schwan 
Gen. Adolph Buschlieck 
Gen. Wilhelm Heine 
Gen. Gustav Kaemmerling 
Gen. Louis von Blessing 
Gen. August Mohr 
Gen. Julius Raith 
Gen. F. C. Winkler 
Gen. Johann A. Koltes 
Gen. Herman Li eh 
Gen. Alexander von Schrader 
Gen. William C. Kueffner 
Gen. George W. Mindel 
Gen. Felix Salm-Salm 
Gen. G. R. Paul 
Gen. Karl Leopold Mathies 
Gen. Edward S. Meyer 
Gen. George A. Custer 
Gen. Adolph Engelmann 
Gen. Joseph Gerhardt 
Gen. Hermann Haupt 
Forty-eight names — and there 
are others. 

If it had not been for the Ger- 
mans, both Missouri and Maryland 
would have been lost to the Union. 
One third of the Union armies was 
of German blood. One man out of 
every ten was born in Germany. 
General Robert E. Lee said, and 
Mrs. Jeff Davis repeated the senti- 
ment: "Take the Dutch out of the 
Union Army, and we could lick the 
Yankees easily." 

Yet this man Wilson in Wash- 



— 7 



ingtoii dares to question tlie loyalty 
of tlic German-Americans! Where 
were the Wilsons in the great 
crisis of the rebellion? Some were 
too proud to fight. Others were 
shouldering gvms for the Confed- 
eracy, sliooting down Union sol- 
diers with Bi'itish bullets! Is it 
any wonder that Wilson insists we 
must furnish ammunition to Eng- 
land? He is paying off a family 
debt. 

Let me tell you that if some Gib- 
bon of the future will have to 
write the Decline and Fall of the 
United States, there will be no 
German names in his roll-call of 
infamy. Germans have cemented 
with their sweat and their blood 
the battlements of Liberty's citadel. 
It was not they that admitted the 
treacherous island pirates to our 
gates. Aside from one man, who 
made the name of Bethlehem a 
mockery of peace, they were not 
Germans who sold to our worst 
enemy the bombs and bayonets to 
murder our best friend. It was nol 
the Germans in America who stood 
by smiling while Russia immolat- 
ed the Jews and Japan strangled 
China. It was not the Germans in 
America that sold their birthright 
for a Carnegie pension or a Rhodes 
scholarship. It was not the Ger- 
mans in America who betrayed the 
plans of the Irish Renublic to 
Britain and sullied their soul> 
with the blood of Dul)lin's hero 
band. It was not the Germans in 
America who spat upon the Declar- 
ation of Independence and cringed 
before the blood-stained bullies 
that called Abraham Lincoln an 
ape! 

The German-Americans believe 
in the hyphen, but they know that 
the hyphen is a mark of union, not 
of separation. 

Firm as a wall of iron they have 
stood in defense of true Ameri- 
canism. As a rock of granite thev 



still will stand, amid the storm of 
calumny and defamation, to save 
our country from a new British 
tonciuest. Morgan may give them 
our banks, and they may buy our 
newspapers, but Justice is mightier 
than Gold, and Truth defies the 
slanderous darts of Malice. We 
can cry with Brutus, that 

"We are armed so strong in 

honesty 
That your words pass by us as 

the idle wind. 
Which we respect not!" 

And like Ai-mistead at Fort Me 
Henry, like Kichlein at Long 
Island, like Herkimer at Oriskany, 
like Quitman at Chapultepec, like 
Osterhaus on Lookout Mountain, 
like Schurz and Stcinwehr on 
Cemetery Ridge, like Schley at 
Santiago, like Barbara Frietchie 
waving her flag before the eyes of 
traitors, the Germans will be on 
the firing line in any crisis — not 
watchfully waiting, but striking 
hard blows for the honor and glory 
of our flag and our country, the 
priceless heritage of liberty, the 
radiant hope of humanity, that 
government of the people, by the 
people, and for the people may 
not perish from the face of the 
earth! 

This reprint of Mr. Seibel's ad- 
dress is a consequence of countless 
ai)plications to The Staats-Zeitung 
for copies of its issue of the 4th of 
September, in which the address 
was exclusively, among metropol- 
itan newspapers, i)ublished in full. 

Its inability to supply the copies 
requested moves The Staats-Zei- 
tung to this method of meeting the 
wishes of its friends and the 
friends of racial unity in Amei-ica. 



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